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5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

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Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#21
post #7

> Yet sophisticated MRI scans detected no significant differences in brain volume, structure or white matter — signs of injury or degeneration In case it wasn’t clear: Neuroimaging can’t visualize every possible problem. They performed one type of testing and didn’t find anything. That’s not the same as concluding that there are no problems. It should go without saying that a clean MRI isn’t proof that other neurolog…

[deleted]

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#26
post #23

[flagged]

afaik posts can't get downvotes on hn, only comments.

My karma is north of 14k. Maybe I haven't unlocked some undocumented downvote privilege, but if it exists, it's certainly not public and the barrier to entry is quite high.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#27
post #23

[flagged]

Perhaps because they’re approaching the matter with flippant dismissals that it’s “made up” and invoking the Cold War with shallow accusations that it’s anti communist propaganda — rather than anything that resembles discourse on why we ought believe this to be the case.

(Postscript) In contrast, the one which raises the possibility of hypochondria and burnout is still at the top in my browser; it seems adequately skeptical, but doesn’t appear to be radically downvoted like the others, presumably because there’s more content to it.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#28
post #2

The symptoms sounded like burnout from the beginning. Hypochondria is a common symptom of stress, depression, and other mental disorders. A scary and confusion symptom when one does not have tendencies for it normally. There isn't one clean piece of evidence for any energy weapon or attack hypothesis. It's about time the mass hysteria surrounding Havana syndrome is laid to rest.

While I agree there is not evidence of a weapon, I am not buying hypochondria. The amount of reports and the peculiarity of the hearing symptoms don't add up to hypochondria. Local environmental pathogens or chemicals could be a cause. Also, our ability to detect such pathogens or brain abnormalities is still very limited, so finding no abnormalities is not surprising.

Lots of reports and peculiar symptoms don't rule out psychogenic causes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness

We had a case of it near us in upstate New York a few years back. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/magazine/teenage-girls-tw... (https://archive.is/EoY7e)

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't for example see ME/CFS or Long Covid neural damage on a typical MRI but when you do autopsies you find a host of problems including complete viral RNA and intrusion of the immune system that shouldn't be there. Given the similar presentation of Havana syndrome to ME/CFS it would seem sensible to look for some of the similar markers of vascular brain damage with the process developed there by Jared Younger a…

Very unrelated but if anyone reading this is dealing with long covid/brain fog related symptoms, try famotidine (pepcid).

What's the justification for this recommendation? I find this really curious since I had some stomach acid issues that started during the pandemic (like, perhaps late 2020) that I assumed were stress related. I don't remember actually getting COVID in that time span (my uni was testing us every 3 days so I would have noticed if I had it around then). My primary care prescribed me famotidine for it in ~2022 which helped for a while. I still take it regularly but I did a 90 run of omeprazole last year.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#30
post #7

> Yet sophisticated MRI scans detected no significant differences in brain volume, structure or white matter — signs of injury or degeneration In case it wasn’t clear: Neuroimaging can’t visualize every possible problem. They performed one type of testing and didn’t find anything. That’s not the same as concluding that there are no problems. It should go without saying that a clean MRI isn’t proof that other neurolog…

You can be scanned every way with different frequencies or methods and still not find a cause for migraines. Then find it can be stress, referred pain, or many other things.

Use the medicines to fix many issues and the mechanism for its action is unknown yet produces a positive outcome. This affected a handful of people yet gets a lot of attention like shark attacks versus drowning.

Any topics that are outside of the programming space are getting significantly worse for comments to where it’s becoming a waste of time to refute them or even acknowledge that they are trolls.

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